U.S.'s 5,025,817 Chinese Spies

Sino-American engineer arrested for taking US missile defense secrets to China

By Justin Rohrlich & Tim Fernholz

When Wei Sun, a 48-year-old engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems, left for an overseas trip last year, he told the company he planned to bring his company-issued HP EliteBook 840 laptop along.
Sun, a Chinese-born American citizen, had been working at Raytheon, the fourth-largest US defense contractor, for a decade. 

He held a secret-level security clearance and worked on highly sensitive missile programs used by the US military.Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of restricted data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.

Sun had access to sensitive missile defense technology.
Sun didn’t listen, according to US prosecutors. 

While he was out of the country, Sun connected to Raytheon’s internal network on the laptop. 

He sent an email suddenly announcing he was quitting his job after 10 years in order to study and work overseas.
When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. 

But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop.
A Raytheon lawyer examined the machine, and confirmed it contained technical specifications prohibited from export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in addition to security software that is itself export-controlled and requires a special license to take outside the United States.
Sun was arrested by FBI agents the next day. 

His attorney, Cameron Morgan, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Raytheon said only that the company “cooperated with this investigation,” declining to elaborate further.
Court documents refer to Sun possessing classified files related to several different air defense systems designed by Raytheon for the US military and sold to American allies and proxies around the world.
The case, which has not been reported until now, is yet another example of China’s increasing efforts to acquire American military technology. 

The country’s security services have already compromised dozens of crucial US weapons systems, such as the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system, and the Aegis ballistic missile defense system used by the Navy. 

In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile being developed by the Navy known as Sea Dragon. 

The Chinese managed to get massive amounts of sensitive signals and sensor data, in addition to the Navy’s entire electronic warfare library.
The weapons with which Sun worked are “pretty much top-of-the-line American systems,” according to Dean Cheng, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who studies China’s military capabilities.
The AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile, is used on US fighter jets like the F-16 and F-22 to destroy other aircraft before they can be seen by anything but radar. 

It has also been converted into a ground-based air defense system, which is Sun’s focus, since prosecutors describe his work as centered on ballistic missile defense.
The documents also say Raytheon employees will provide testimony about the Stinger missile, a “man-portable” air-defense missile that can be fired by troops on the ground, made most famous when the US supplied it to Afghan warlords fighting against occupying Soviet troops.
Perhaps most significant is Sun’s involvement with the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program, an effort to replace the interceptor used by US air defense systems to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon cancelled the program last year because of technical problems, but information about the project would still be useful to China to understand what the US might do to defend from conventional or nuclear missiles. 

Missile technology has become central to Beijing’s strategy to deter US power in the Pacific, making up for deficiencies and a lack of experience with weapons systems like jet fighters.
China would be eager to learn how to defeat the missiles by understanding the technical details of how they find their targets with radar and other sensors, and how they respond to attempts to jam or distract them, Cheng told Quartz.
China already has its own equivalents of these weapons, so it’s not necessarily seeking to copy US technology. 

However, as one example, China’s advanced air-to-air missile has never been used in combat, while the AMRAAM has, so its design may offer lessons that China’s defense industrial base has yet to learn.
Cheng said this is “one piece of the larger Chinese espionage picture… we tend to focus on Chinese cyber [but] they have human intelligence, they have people trying to steal examples of it in other countries as well.”
“Chinese government agencies are keeping their eye on former citizens who are working in big US companies [like Raytheon],” said Janosh Neumann, a former counterintelligence officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service who now lives in the United States.

The files Sun took out of the country could have just as easily been purloined by Chinese spy service without the engineer’s knowledge.

“If your computer gets left in a hotel room, somebody could image the whole thing and you’d never know it.” 

“There’s always the risk of something like that—no different than if somebody took pictures or copies of blueprints or a paper file.”
A grand jury in Arizona last week returned a superseding indictment charging Sun with additional counts of violating ITAR. 

Legal filings suggest that Sun, who initially pleaded not guilty, is preparing to change his plea to guilty as part of an agreement with the Department of Justice. 

He is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 14.

The Chinese Thief Crying about Theft

China ratchets up criticism of US missile plans, while speeding up its own arsenal
By Jeff Daniels

Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense

China's military stepped up its criticism this week of South Korea's plans to deploy an advanced anti-missile radar system.
Xinhua, the official press agency for China, also vowed that its "armed forces will make the necessary preparations and resolutely safeguard the nation's security."
The THAAD missile defense system, manufactured by U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin, is expected to be deployed on the Korean Peninsula to defend against the threat of a North Korean missile attack. 

Earlier this month, North Korea test fired a ballistic missile as President Donald Trump was meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
THAAD, which stands for Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, is designed to protect against both short and medium-range ballistic missile attacks.
Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis visited Seoul where he reiterated American support for South Korea and defensive measures such as deploying THAAD to protect against the growing nuclear and ballistic missile threat from North Korea.
The first THAAD missile battery could be in place this year. 

The Seoul government gave the green light to deploy the system last summer but that was before the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, South Korea's suspended president. 

The political crisis and change in leadership could ultimately result in a change in policy.
China's press agency on Thursday quoted a spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense as saying the THAAD system "will gravely undermine the regional strategic balance and the strategic security interests of countries in the region, including China and Russia."
The comments come as a U.S. aircraft carrier strike group patrols the South China Sea to improve "readiness," according to the U.S. Navy.
The Chinese navy also is in the region to carry out a "counter-attack drill," according to the newspaper run by China's People's Liberation Army. 

The same paper reported that China is close to completing its second aircraft carrier.
Meantime, China is rapidly developing missile technology of its own as a potential threat to the West, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a global defense think tank.

Missile destroyer Guangzhou launches an air-defense missile during a military exercise near the Spratly islands, July 8, 2016.

"China is developing what could be the world's longest range air-to-air missile," said John Chipman, director-general and chief executive of the IISS.
Chipman made his comments at a press conference last week highlighting IISS's annual Military Balance report, a global assessment of military capabilities and defense economics from IISS.
Overall, IISS believes China is gaining significant ground in the air arena. 

It pointed out that China's budget on military expenditures in 2016 of $145 billion is about 1.8 times higher than South Korea and Japan combined.
"Western technological superiority, once taken for granted, is increasingly challenged," said Chipman. 

"We now judge that in some capability areas, particularly in the air domain, China appears to be reaching near-parity with the West."
According to IISS research, at least one of the missile systems China is developing have no Western equivalent.
The Chinese air force's PL-10 dogfighting missile is seen as one of the country's most potent guided weapons. 

There's also China's long-range PL-15 advanced missile, which has been tested on fighters and destroyed drones.
"When it enters service, this new system will hold at risk large, high-value targets like tankers and AWACS aircraft platforms that would traditionally safely loiter outside the rage of current air-to-air weapons," Chipman said.
The PL-15 developmental missile is longer than China's current air-to-air radar-guided weapon system known as the PL-12, a missile developed more than a decade ago with help from Russia.
China's domestic military development and advanced research has grown in the past few years to the point where the communist nation is developing and manufacturing its own weapon systems, no longer relying as much on Russia, according to IISS.
The air-to-air PL-15 missile's main rival in the U.S. arsenal is the AIM-120, also known as AMRAAM (or Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) and manufactured by Massachusetts-based defense contractor Raytheon.
Even America's next-generation F-35 stealth fighter — a fifth-generation fighter — could be put to the test by some of the advanced weapons under development by China.
Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace at IISS, said the pace and introduction of China's development of air-to-air missile technology is "almost unheralded." 

He said China's military has "a very, very capable palate of air-to-air weapons. In terms of what this means for the F-35, well it makes the air environment that much more difficult."
China also has been developing its own fifth-generation fighter, the J-20. 

The first two J-20 stealth fighters are now in test units, according to IISS.
A second stealth fighter is getting tested in China, the FC-31 Gyrfalcon. 

The plane is expected to eventually become available for overseas exports.
"Beijing is now beginning to offer for export some of its modern military systems across the globe," said Chipman. 

"There is a growing proliferation of lethality, and the increasing sophistication of these systems risks complicating Western states' military options."